Collector Fred Sharf ‘rescues’ art from oft-forgotten past

When Harvard graduate Fred Sharf turned down a job teaching American history at the school to join the family business, he didn’t shelve his interest in history. He channeled it into collecting.

He’s acquired Spanish-American War illustrations, architectural drawings, automotive design drawings, Japanese Meiji period woodblock prints, fashion illustrations and 1940s British women’s wear — to name a few of the directions his more than 60 years of collecting have taken him.

“Fred is always looking for interesting areas to collect where somebody else isn’t paying attention,” said John Blades, director of the Flagler Museum, where shows featuring Sharf’s art have been exhibited. “He’s usually ahead of the curve.”

Sharf is not interested in what he calls “trophies.” Typically he collects things, researches them, writes a publication about them, exhibits them and donates them to a museum.

“He rescues things from the past and gives them significance,” said Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Two architectural renderings of movie theaters that hang above the couch in Sharf’s and his wife Jean’s penthouse apartment in Palm Beach are a case in point.

They seem like typical living room decor. But listen to Sharf and you discover that they’re much more.

The pictures were created by Vincent Raney for a project in Honolulu. “Because of the buildup for the Pacific War, the Army and Navy were sending a tremendous number of troops to Hawaii and they didn’t have enough to do,” Sharf explained. So, even though building materials were scarce, the theater was constructed in 1943.

“The story is what interests me,” the collector said. “I happen to think they are handsome watercolors, but the story behind them is riveting.”

Sharf chose business over academia to support his collecting habit. His sports marketing company and real estate investments brought him wealth, and they didn’t stand in the way of his scholarly pursuits.

Sharf has written or edited more than 40 publications, many of which are connected to exhibitions of his collections. The hands-on collector likes to collaborate with curators who haven’t had widespread exposure to give them a leg up in their careers.

“It’s been a pleasure for everyone who works with Fred to learn from his experience,” said curator Marianne Lamonaca. She teamed with Sharf on the recent “Styled for the Road: The Art of Automobile Design, 1908-1948” and another show at The Wolfsonian-Florida International University in Miami Beach.

Sharf works with several institutions. But his first loyalty is to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He’s a trustee and the museum’s representative to its sister institution in Nagoya, Japan. The Sharfs’ primary residence is in the Boston suburb of Brookline.

Recently, he was instrumental in the museum’s acquisition of 125 dresses and other garments designed by part-time Palm Beach resident Arnold Scaasi. A retrospective of Scaasi’s designs will open at the MFA in September.

Sharf also provides exhibitions for Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital in Boston. Art sometimes should go where the people are rather than waiting for them to come to it, he said.

“One thing I find interesting is that with resources, I can make things happen,” he said. “I don’t have to wait.”

Not long ago, Kenneth Paul Block, the principal illustrator for Women’s Wear Daily from the 1960s to the 1980s, wanted to donate more than 1,000 drawings to the MFA.

The museum couldn’t afford to hire someone to organize the drawings and wouldn’t accept them unless they were. Sharf hired an expert to catalog them and arranged for their transport from New York to Boston.

Sharf extends his can-do approach to individuals. When he noticed that Rogers was succumbing to middle-age spread, Sharf hired a personal trainer to whip him into shape.

People always know where they stand with Sharf. “Fred only knows how to be direct,” Rogers said. “He states his mind. If you don’t agree, he doesn’t take offense.”

Sharf, 75, usually has several projects going at once. Currently, he’s on the road, researching a book related to an exhibition of 1930s Japanese paintings that recently closed at the MFA, consulting with his Japanese colleagues about exporting an MFA fashion exhibition to Nagoya, inspecting additions to his collection of 1940s British women’s wear, and researching wartime London for a planned exhibition of the clothes at the MFA and the Wolfsonian.

Time has shown that in Sharf’s case, the dreams of youth can last a lifetime.